


Mirage

by robotboy



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Written before Chapter 14: The Tragedy, no i'm not changing it for canon :p, yes half the things i wrote happened in later episodes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:42:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28391868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robotboy/pseuds/robotboy
Summary: The Mandalorian crashes his ship in Mos Pelgo, and Cobb Vanth comes to the rescue.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Cobb Vanth
Comments: 34
Kudos: 172
Collections: Covert Discord New Years Fic Exchange





	Mirage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VoltKnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VoltKnight/gifts).



Din blacked out somewhere in the atmosphere above Mos Eisley.

The next parts were sensations, more than memories: the throttle rattling out of his grip. Pressure on his eardrums. A stomach-jerking swoop and a flash of warning lights. Reaching blindly for the kid. Blood spreading across his waist, hot and sticky. The grating crunch as his ship plummeted into a dune.

A hand on his cheek.

He came to with a gasp, his gloved hand smacking the visor. The helmet was in place.

‘Whoa, _hey,_ good,’ a familiar voice that Din couldn’t quite place. ‘Can you hear me?’

Din coughed, and tasted smoke.

‘The kid—where’s Grogu?’ he rasped.

‘He’s right here,’ the voice said. Din’s spare hand was jostled, a stripe of pain in the forearm and then the soft resistance of Grogu’s jacket.

A sob burst out of Din as three little fingers closed around his thumb.

‘He gave you a name, huh?’ the voice asked. ‘Grogu?’

The three fingers squeezed Din’s thumb. His heart thumped, and it made him cough.

‘Yeesh, that was _wet.’_

Din finally placed the voice. He squinted up and the blur of red confirmed it: Cobb Vanth. Was he in Mos Eisley? Had Din even crashed in Mos Eisley?

‘I’m gonna get you back to town, okay?’ there was an uncertain quaver in Cobb’s tone. Din frowned, trying to piece together an explanation. ‘You just hang in there.’

Grogu chattered while Cobb moved around. Din shifted, trying to twist away from the throbbing ache in his midline. Did he get stabbed? He might have been stabbed, but that had been hours ago.

Compressor. Peli could help him fix the ship’s overheating compressor. That was a good idea. He’d dealt with the getting stabbed part by the time he thought of it, right?

He lost that train of thought as Cobb dragged him onto something solid: it might have been the ship’s nose panel. Din curled up on it, wrapping himself around the pain in his belly. Grogu’s chattering was drowned out by the distinctive squeal of a pod engine, and Din’s consciousness slipped off as the desert whirled past.

*

‘Did I get stabbed?’

Cobb jumped, a flurry of curses suggesting he hadn’t realised Din was awake.

‘That would explain the hole through you, yeah,’ he raised his eyebrows at Din’s visor.

Din tried to nudge himself upright to look at the wound. His body had other ideas, slamming him with nausea until he went slack, each shallow breath stinging him.

‘Where’s…?’ he rasped. His tongue was made of sand.

‘Kid’s still here,’ Cobb guessed the rest, head angling somewhere behind Din. ‘Grogu, you said?’

‘Uh-huh,’ Din’s spine let out a fraction of its tension, which only made more room for the aching.

‘Cute,’ Cobb wrinkled his nose.

‘You’ll… if I don’t…’ Din fumbled for a sentence, and lost it.

‘If you’re gonna ask me to adopt him again, I’m gonna politely decline until you’re actually dead,’ Cobb raised an eyebrow. ‘Flattered as I am.’

‘He needs someone,’ Din gritted out. ‘Someone good.’

‘You’ve a lot of faith in me being a good man,’ Cobb murmured it like he didn’t expect Din to hear.

Din huffed through a laugh, and his entire torso seized up. Cobb winced in sympathy.

‘You did just save me,’ Din pointed out. It was easier to talk if he did it in one breath.

‘Let’s see if I can fix this,’ Cobb pursed his lips. ‘Then we can say I saved you.’

Something cold pressed Din’s skin, making him shudder. He tilted his head to peer at Cobb’s hands, which pressed a damp cloth against the wound. The relief of the chill warred with the strangeness of his skin exposed. Cobb must have rucked up Din’s shirt to reveal his abdomen. It made sense, from a medical point of view, but a foreign touch still made Din’s nerves light up.

It would be about the worst possible time to discover he was ticklish, he realised, as Cobb carefully cleaned the puncture. Din braced for the burn of disinfectant, but whatever substance Cobb was using only left a tingling cold. He stared at the streaked bloodstains, swirling around the moles and scars on his abdomen in constellations nobody else knew—until now.

Cobb wrung the cloth out in a bowl, and Din nudged himself a little further upright.

‘It entered through the front?’ Cobb asked.

Din nodded. Cobb wrapped the cloth around the tip of his finger and tipped the bottle of ointment against it.

‘This is gonna hurt,’ he warned.

It didn’t, or at least, not by Din’s standards. Cobb was meticulous in cleaning the wound itself, his face so close to Din’s abdomen that his breath rustled the hair around Din’s navel. His free hand rested on Din’s hip, complemented by an inarticulate murmuring like Din was a startled bantha.

Din found he didn’t mind, even if his heart was trying to skip its way out of his cuirass. When Cobb finally straightened, Din exhaled until he was sinking into—

‘Is this your bed?’

‘Yup,’ Cobb produced another bottle from somewhere nearby. Din recognised the viscosity of bacta.

‘You don’t have to—‘

‘—pay me back for it,’ Cobb cut him off. ‘When you’re in one piece.’

Din grunted, which was as much of an argument as he could muster. Cobb drizzled it into the wound, and Din held himself still as it squirmed through his insides.

‘The back’s already cleaned and packed,’ Cobb explained. Din watched as he folded gauze into a neat wad, laying it over the cut.

‘I can…’ Din began to offer, and was silenced by Cobb pressing his hip. He tried to keep his belly from visibly fluttering.

‘You can let me do it,’ Cobb spoke softly, but his eyes were stern. Din might still have been delirious, his gaze catching on the hint of teeth between Cobb’s lips.

Din stayed silent as Cobb finished taping down the bandage. He craned his neck at a rustling noise, and sure enough Grogu was digging around in Cobb’s closet. Cobb shot a fond look in the same direction, so Din decided not to scold the kid.

‘Now,’ Cobb brought Din’s attention back with a slight pressure to his hipbone. ‘You should really drink something. I’m gonna go wash up. Don’t pass out on me.’

His touch was gone before Din could think to ask for it to stay. Cobb whisked out the doorway, and there was an obvious clattering from where Din guessed the kitchen was.

He gingerly propped himself on his elbows. There was a cup of water on the bedside. It took a little fumbling to get the helmet tilted up, his left arm still tender from the crash. The water had the stale flavour of a moisture farm, but his throat was so scratchy that he didn’t care. He should take sips, but he gulped it down and ignored the pang in his chest.

His joints were wobbly, and there was a wriggling in his abdomen from the bacta knitting things back together. A long blink confirmed there were no spots in his vision. He took his gloves off, digging his thumb into the knotted tendons in his elbow until it made him whimper. He twisted as best he could, confirming the crash had left a long but shallow graze down the side of his leg. Peeling back the torn fabric revealed bruises that would probably look worse tomorrow, but they weren’t worth wasting bacta on.

He tipped the helmet up to finish the last of the water. The cup barely reached his lips when the memory hit him as hard as the ship crashing.

Someone had touched his face.

His throat tightened, pain slicing through him as he scurried back against the wall. The cup clattered off his cuirass, the last of the water splashing over his forearm as his fingers dug into Cobb’s sheets.

The kid looked up and chittered a question. His ears twitched in a gesture Din had come to recognise as concern.

Din let out a breath as fragile as glass. His knees had drawn themselves to his chest and the sting of the grazes was enough to distract him from the sickening anxiety. He scowled, shutting his eyes. That made it easier to pull together the fraying string of events.

The stench of the engine overheating. Brittle sand on his skin. Blood cloying his teeth. Searing sunlight: it was too much, without the visor. A clumsy wriggling, Din too weak to fight the mechanism unclasping. Hard nails tugging his cowl down. Then, there it was: three little fingers patting his cheek, pushing. A flood of pins and needles as the feeling surged back into his legs. He’d cracked one eye open and barely managed to focus on the huge, imploring gaze. The wrinkle on that small green forehead that appeared whenever Grogu was overreaching himself.

It was too much. He couldn’t heal someone after pulling the ship out of a nosedive. Din had tried to say so, and the hand shoved firmly into his cheek. Then a suspiciously vast nothing, until Cobb Vanth appeared.

As if summoned, Cobb knocked on the wall beside the doorway.

‘Yeah,’ Din mumbled, letting go of his knees.

‘I oughta check you over properly,’ Cobb kept his tone light as he gave a piece of jerky to Grogu. ‘Suspect I’d get knocked out for my trouble.’

‘I’m fine,’ Din insisted.

Cobb gave him a look that suggested he wouldn’t appreciate being lied to again.

‘I’ll _be_ fine,’ Din amended.

‘Uh-huh?’ Cobb happened to leave a fresh cloth beside the bottle of ointment on the bedside. Din silently took it, and set about swabbing his leg.

It wasn’t very effective: Din paused long enough to see that Cobb was conspicuously occupied with entertaining Grogu, then shuffled out of his pants and boots. The skin from his calf to his flank was mottled with scratches. He made quick work of cleaning it, ignoring the way his cheeks flared now he was entirely exposed below his cuirass. Rumpling the blankets offered the bare minimum of decency. By the time he was finished, his stomach had only a dull ache, and muscles in his arm were more stiff than sore.

‘Hey,’ he said.

Cobb’s head turned only partway, but his lashes flicked up and down, betraying how much he could see.

‘Thank you,’ Din murmured, and a dimple appeared on Cobb’s cheek.

‘Least I can do,’ he shrugged, tickling under Grogu’s chin before getting to his feet. ‘Just lucky you crashed so close by.’

‘I was aiming for Mos Eisley,’ Din frowned. He should put his gloves back on: he didn’t.

‘Well, you’d been stabbed,’ Cobb gave him a generous half-shrug. ‘The dunes aren’t _that_ far.’

‘How’d you find me?’

Cobb pursed his lips. His eyes shifted back towards Grogu, and Din knew.

‘I thought I oughta take the speeder round the dunes this morning,’ Cobb shook his head. ‘Hours before you turned up.’

Grogu blinked sweetly. Neither of them bought it.

‘When you found me,’ Din tampered the trembling in his voice, ‘Was—was I…?’

He had been—he’d been trying. Since Trask, little ventures, quick moments on the ship. He’d lifted the helmet, first just the lower edge, his stomach churning through sharing a meal with Grogu. Then, higher: meeting those huge eyes with his own gaze, before the stark taste of fresh air and the flooding wrongness overwhelmed him. It was worth it for Grogu’s delight, his ears twitching and stealing breathless smiles from Din. Sometimes it was easier when Grogu was sleeping: the one time he’d awakened and grabbed at Din’s nose, that startled chuckle had kept Din’s fear banked.

Cobb whistled through his teeth, looking at the ceiling.

‘Well, I wouldn’t know,’ his voice was melodious when he lied. ‘It gets so hot in the desert sun, you can’t hardly tell what’s real and what’s a mirage.’

He looked at the helmet, drifting down to the cuirass before lingering at Din’s bare waist.

‘The way the light glares off that chestplate, I had to squint,’ he finished. ‘Kid was a real help.’

Din couldn’t speak around the lump in his throat. He nodded, and Cobb gave him an easy sigh.

‘He’ll need to rest,’ Din realised. The impetus was enough to get him to his feet, if he braced a hand on the wall. Cobb moved in, not coddling but managing to seem as if he just happened to enjoy standing where Din could grip his shoulder for balance.

Sure enough, Grogu had built himself a nest in one of Cobb’s ponchos. Din nudged the closet door until it was almost shut.

‘He’ll be out cold for at least a day,’ Din predicted. ‘Surprised he lasted this long.’

‘Had to make sure you were okay,’ Cobb guessed.

Warmth spread on Din’s cheeks—not that Cobb could tell.

‘You ought to rest too,’ Cobb said. ‘Hell of a beating you took.’

‘Hm,’ Din nodded. Cobb was steering him back to the bed. ‘What about you?’

‘I got a chair,’ Cobb shrugged.

‘You could… also,’ Din stumbled through the words, if not the grammar. ‘The bed.’

A pause, long enough that Cobb could be running through all the polite excuses to be made—if he wanted to make them.

‘I wouldn’t be jostling you?’ was his eventual response. There was a little more weight in the question, glinting in his eye.

‘I wouldn’t mind,’ Din murmured.

Cobb lowered him onto the mattress. His fingers trailed over Din’s palm, a wordless promise of return. He shut off the light, heading to the fresher.

Din set about removing his cuirass, pauldrons and vambraces, shedding layers until all that remained was the helmet. He realised belatedly that he could ask Cobb for spare clothes, but Cobb had agreed to join him without. When Cobb emerged from the fresher in loose pants that left very little to the imagination, Din decided it was a moot point.

Cobb didn’t hesitate to slide under the sheets beside Din, leaving only enough space to avoid the bandaging.

‘You know...’ his voice dropped to a lower register, ‘I hoped you’d come back.’

Din nodded. He reached out, hand coming to rest on Cobb’s shoulder. His heart was pounding so hard it was surely palpable through the mattress.

‘Hoped I’d get to undress you, too,’ Cobb admitted.

‘Because I’d been stabbed?’ Din huffed a laugh.

‘Because you wanted me to,’ Cobb’s grin caught the faint light from the window.

He had a way of filling all Din’s silences with candour. He had a way with everything.

‘I…’ Din swallowed, and Cobb’s gaze latched onto the bobbing of his throat. ‘I want you to.’

The corners of Cobb’s eyes crinkled. His touch found Din’s hip again, tilting it with the same confidence he’d shown earlier. Din’s fingers curled in Cobb’s collarbone, trapped by the rises and hollows. Cobb was drifting closer to his navel, deftly avoiding the wound. The intimacy of it was as breathtaking as the ease they seemed to slip into, the same as they had when fighting together. Din reaching up to find the delicate pulse at Cobb’s throat; Cobb’s palm flattening to feel how Din gasped.

Din moved down as Cobb moved up, catching in the middle. Cobb took Din’s hand to hold it over his chest. His heart was racing as fast as Din’s. Din cradled his face with the other hand, so the moonlight framed the silvery stubble.

Cobb’s tongue darted out to wet his lips. Din’s fingers twitched like they could catch it, tracing Cobb’s mouth where it once was. Cobb pressed into the pads of Din’s fingers, something so much like a kiss that Din whimpered.

Cobb guided his hand lower, over a slender waist and snake-hips. It wasn’t rushed, but by no means was it hesitant. Din could slow him without stalling, exploring, teasing, finding what made Cobb surge forward and shiver. A scrape of nails and a firm grip drew a whispered _yes_ that hooked on Din’s fingertips.

‘Keep quiet?’ Din whispered.

‘The kid?’ Cobb nodded.

‘He should sleep heavy,’ Din said. ‘But…’

‘Hate to be wrong,’ Cobb guessed.

‘Yeah.’

Cobb pulled his lower lip between his teeth. Din wished he could be the one to do it.

‘There’s…’ Cobb held up a finger, and Din had to smile behind the helmet at how much it reminded him of their first meeting. Cobb twisted, a sinuous show of flexibility as he rummaged in the bedside and returned with a vial of slick. He raised a questioning eyebrow, and Din answered with a roll of his hips. The smile that broke over Cobb’s face was a sunrise.

Then long, languid fingers were sliding up the shaft of his cock, the slick warming quickly as Din poured himself into Cobb’s grasp. Cobb seemed more intent on exploring, learning the weight and the girth of Din’s cock as it filled, finding what prompted twitches and thrusts, what kind of delicate touch around the head had Din quivering with need.

Though Din had been the one to ask for quiet, he couldn’t quite hold back every whine. Not when Cobb found a pattern, his whole body arching forward in interest at the reaction it brought. Cobb’s own length was a line of pressure on Din’s hip, not impatient but insistent. Din’s hand came to rest around Cobb’s neck, thumb driving through the wisps of hair at the back of Cobb’s skull in an echo of how Cobb stroked him. Din pulled, bringing them chest to chest, Cobb’s face so close that it almost pressed to the visor. His breath must be warm, his lips plump from how he’d bitten them, desert-chafed but damp. A crinkle was forming between his brows as he concentrated, the force of his charm slipping into something much deeper as he drew Din close.

‘That’s it, that’s so good,’ he murmured. ‘Want you—want to…’

He had such a way with words. This was what brought Din over the edge, hearing how Cobb lost them at his expense. He spilled into the scarce space between them, a groan rumbling in his chest. It was only afterwards he realised how tight he was gripping Cobb’s spine, how his leg had hooked possessively over Cobb’s. He unwound himself gradually, his pulse tumbling as the heat of orgasm rolled through him. There was a faint tug from his injury, provoked by the tension and release. Cobb seemed to guess, glancing down at it.

‘You okay?’

‘I will be,’ Din shook his head.

Cobb was entirely unselfconscious as he slipped out of his pants. He dragged his hand through the mess Din had made, using it to slick and stroke himself. Din took a second to catch up, then he was nudging Cobb’s hand out of the way.

‘Yeah,’ Cobb grinned, sprawling back the moment Din began to touch him. ‘Okay, _yeah.’_

He was already hard as steel, his cock throbbing in Din’s hand. It was as much an art of tempering Cobb’s pleasure as stoking it: Din was firm but always slower than the short thrusts that Cobb tried to prompt him with.

‘Oh, _oh,’_ Cobb writhed under his touch, so beautifully optimistic about how Din could be hurried. ‘Darlin’, come _on.’_

And if it weren’t for the helmet, Din’s face would be a ruin.

He shifted up onto his knees, ignoring the jolt of complaint in his side. Cobb’s head lifted in surprise, but he couldn’t speak before Din was spreading his thighs apart. Din kept stroking his cock, loose and easy, as his other hand gathered some slick and reached lower. Cobb’s ass was as skinny as the rest of him. His fingers breezed over Cobb’s skin, even as Cobb’s hips tilted eagerly. He brushed back and forth, stroking the tender flesh around Cobb’s rim, until Cobb’s face was scrunched in frustration.

The moment he opened his mouth to beg, Din nudged the tip of his finger inside. Cobb almost melted into the bed. Din circled and teased, finding a short thrust that made Cobb’s cock pulse and repeating the motion. Cobb’s hand clapped over his mouth, stifling a moan. Din used his knees to push Cobb’s thighs wider, bowing over his chest to get the angle just right. He slid in past the first knuckle, and Cobb was almost greedy for the second. Din let him work for it, rocking Cobb back and forth between his hands. The shivering and clenching had his own cock twitch optimistically.

Cobb writhed, trying to set a faster pace. Din obliged, and Cobb grabbed onto his shoulders. His chest rose and fell with rough breaths, fingers digging into Din’s back as he tried to bargain silently for more. Din couldn’t keep it from him: he plunged his finger deeper, hooking until Cobb tensed around him, a pulse of fluid forming at his slit.

Cobb’s hands scrabbled on the helmet without ever seeking the clasp or the edge. It was a gesture of need, not a demand. Din’s heart hammered, and his eyes shut tight. Cobb wouldn’t take it off, even as he stroked the grooves of the beskar as if it were his lover’s face. He wouldn’t take it off, but he might ask.

And if he asked, Din might take it off himself.

‘Please,’ Cobb hissed, undulating in Din’s hands. ‘You got me—you got me so close, just, _please…’_

He rocked back on Din’s finger, and Din pressed hard, finally giving Cobb the quick strokes he wanted. Cobb’s hand clutched the back of Din’s neck and his thighs locked around Din’s sides as he came, drawn-out and shuddering and inescapable. Din chased every aftershock, until Cobb gave him a weak smack in the side and a muttered _no, really._

Din rolled to one side, while Cobb rummaged around to retrieve his pants, sacrificing them to wipe them both clean. He pushed Din onto his side in the process, taking the opportunity to check all the bandaging was still in place. Once Din had passed inspection, Cobb threw himself down on the mattress with an enormous sigh. He wriggled into the space under Din’s arm, draping his limbs carefully around the uninjured parts. A palm lay possessively on Din’s chest, while Cobb’s lips brushed his shoulder.

‘You really are something,’ Cobb smiled. There was a distinctive spot next to his eye that begged for a kiss.

‘You hardly even know me,’ Din murmured. He stroked a gentle pattern on Cobb’s back, feeling it shift with a deep breath.

‘Not to ruin this,’ Cobb’s eyes were shut, though his eyebrows raised. ‘But I think I might know you better than anyone else.’

His voice was already softening with sleep. Din counted the seconds between his breaths, feeling the steady weight settle across him as Cobb stilled in his arms. 

There was a way to press the catch that released it silently. He tilted the helmet up.

He left the kiss on Cobb’s temple, where he might find it in the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> I have [more marshmando fics here](https://archiveofourown.org/works?utf8=%E2%9C%93&commit=Sort+and+Filter&work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=revised_at&include_work_search%5Brelationship_ids%5D%5B%5D=49111432&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bexcluded_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bcrossover%5D=&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_from%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_to%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_from%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_to%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&fandom_id=31516237&user_id=robotboy) and you can check my works page for lots more Star Wars fic.


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